The Research Triangle: From Tobacco Road to Global Prominence

By Rebecca Lisle

Over the past three decades, the economy of North Carolina's Research Triangle—defined by the cities of Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill—has been transformed from one dependent on agriculture and textiles to one driven by knowledge-based jobs in technology, telecommunications, and pharmaceuticals. Now home to roughly 1.7 million people, the Research Triangle has attracted an influx of new residents from across the country and around the world while continuing to win praise for its high quality of life. At the region's center is the 7,000-acre Research Triangle Park, one of the nation's largest and most prominent research and development campuses. Founded in 1959 through a partnership of local governments, universities, and business leaders, Research Triangle Park has catalyzed the region's rapid growth and hastened its coalescence into a single metropolitan area.

The Research Triangle: From Tobacco Road to Global Prominence describes the history, current challenges, and future prospects of this fascinating metropolitan area. Focusing on the personalities and perspectives of key actors in the development of the region, William M. Rohe traces the emergence of the Research Triangle Park and its role in the region's economic transformation. He also addresses some of the downsides of development, illustrating the strains that explosive population growth has placed on the region's school systems, natural resources, transportation infrastructure, and social cohesion. As Rohe shows, the Research Triangle is not a city in the traditional sense but a sprawling conurbation whose rapid, low-density growth and attendant problems are indicative of metropolitan life in much of America today. Although the Triangle's short-term prospects are bright, Rohe warns that troubling issues loom—the region is expected to add nearly a million residents over the next two decades—and will need to be addressed through improvements in governmental cooperation, regional planning, and civic leadership. Finally, the author outlines key lessons that other metropolitan areas can learn from the Research Triangle's dramatic rise to prominence.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Release date: Apr 17, 2012
• ISBN: 9780812207514

Rebecca Lisle

Rebecca Lisle has written more than 25 books for children. She lives in Bristol, UK.

Book preview

Metropolitan Portraits explores the contemporary metropolis in its

diverse blend of past and present. Each volume describes a North

American urban region in terms of historical experience, spatial

configuration, culture, and contemporary issues. Books in the

series are intended to promote discussion and understanding of

metropolitan North America at the start of the twenty-first century.

JUDITH A. MARTIN, SERIES EDITOR

THE RESEARCH

TRIANGLE

From Tobacco Road to Global Prominence

WILLIAM M. ROHE

University of Pennsylvania Press

Philadelphia

Copyright © 2011 University of Pennsylvania Press

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher.

Published by

University of Pennsylvania Press

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112

www.upenn.edu/pennpress

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Rohe, William M.

The Research Triangle : from Tobacco Road to global prominence / William M. Rohe.—1st ed.

   p. cm.— (Metropolitan portraits)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8122-4343-7 (hardcover : alk. paper)

1. Research Triangle Park Region (N.C.). 2. Research Triangle Park (N.C.)—History. 3. Research Triangle Park Region (N.C.)—Economic conditions. 4. Research Triangle Park Region (N.C.)—Social conditions. 5. Regional planning—North Carolina—Research Triangle Park Region. I. Title. II. Series: Metropolitan portraits.

F262.R27R64   2011

975.6'55—dc22

2011011182

For Jamie, Devon, and Kyla,

who make my world go around

CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction

1    Early History

2    The Birth of the Research Triangle Metropolitan Area

3    Population Growth and Its Impact

4    The Evolving Research Triangle Economy

5    Urban Development and Planning

6    Where Are We Headed?

Notes

Index

PREFACE

All the books in the Metropolitan Portraits series reflect the backgrounds and interests of their authors. This book reflects my background as a professor of city and regional planning and my interests in urban development and redevelopment. My desire was to write a book that would provide both academic and nonacademic readers a broad understanding of the area, including its fascinating history, the key projects that resulted in the development of the metropolitan area, the explosive population growth and diversification of the area, the transformation of the area's economy, and the physical development and planning of the area. As a professor of planning I also wanted to offer a critique of the growth and development of the area and contribute ideas as to what needs to happen for the area to continue to be an attractive place to live and do business.

In my initial broad thinking about the book, I wanted to convey two key ideas. The first is that the Research Triangle, more than most other areas, has been the product of ambitious public-private planning and development initiatives. It did not just develop on its own, it was created, and it continues to be created. The second idea is that the local public, nonprofit, and private leaders are striving to create a world-class region. I do not mean to suggest that the region has necessarily achieved world-class status, only that that is the goal being pursued by area leaders.

Given the breadth of this book, I had to leave out a lot. Each chapter could easily be the subject of one or more books. I apologize in advance to those who feel that their contribution, their issues, or their community was ignored or given short shrift. The shape of a metropolitan area is the result of a large number of individual actions. One of my particular regrets is that I was unable to identify and acknowledge many individuals who have made important contributions to the development of the area. I hope others will be moved to delve more deeply into their contributions to the area. There is so much more that can and should be written about the Research Triangle.

Many people provided valuable assistance in producing this book. I want to thank Judith Martin and Bob Lockhart for developing the Metropolitan Portraits series and for offering me the opportunity to write about the Research Triangle. Judith also provided valuable editorial comments on each chapter of the book. Her enthusiasm and encouragement are greatly appreciated. Executive Assistant Debra Hill of the Center for Urban and Regional Studies at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill also provided valuable assistance in transcribing interviews, digitizing excerpts, and editing and commenting on this book. Several very capable graduate students provided research assistance: Matt Dudick, Alice Gugelmann, Katharine Hebert, Kevin Neary, Kate Newman, Audrey Stewart, and Beverly Wilson. Finally, I would like to thank the following local leaders and astute observers who offered their knowledge and insights in the interviews I conducted for this book: Ted Abernathy, David Bonk, Jim Goodmon, Charles Hayes, John Hodges-Copple, Jonathan Howes, David King, Sydney Miller, Dave Moreau, Elisabeth Rooks, Pearson Stewart, Tony Waldrop, Pam Wall, Rick Weddle, Jesse White, Smedes York, and Ted Zoller.

Introduction

The Research Triangle area, defined here as the seven counties that form the Raleigh-Cary and Durham-Chapel Hill metropolitan statistical areas in North Carolina, offers an intriguing metropolitan growth case study. First, it is a relatively new metro, having largely developed over the past fifty years. So its growth represents more contemporary, rather than historical, circumstances and actions. Second, over the past two decades the Research Triangle has been one of the fastest growing areas in the United States: in 1960 the combined population of the Raleigh and Durham metropolitan statistical areas was 238,000; by 2009 it was almost 1.7 million. Between 2000 and 2009 the Raleigh-Cary metropolitan area was the second fastest-growing in the country. The Research Triangle metro thus presents an excellent opportunity to examine the impacts of rapid population growth.¹ Third, the Research Triangle area has received multiple accolades as one of the country's best places to live and do business. It is a place that has grown rapidly but has managed, so far, to maintain a reputation for offering a high quality of life. What explains the success of the Research Triangle and what are its prospects for the future?

Figure 1. Research Triangle metropolitan area (map by Peter Zambito).

DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE RESEARCH TRIANGLE

The Research Triangle is different from most other metropolitan areas in several interesting and important ways. It was not formed by the largely market-driven expansion of population and development from a single large central city, such as Boston, Philadelphia, Portland, Oregon, San Diego, and most other U.S. metropolitan areas. Rather, the Research Triangle's growth is largely the result of a public and private planned research park and related investments in transportation infrastructure. There has been a level of intentionality in the development of the Research Triangle that surpasses that of other metropolitan areas.

The Research Triangle's key historical event was the creation of the Research Triangle Park (RTP) on four thousand acres of scrub pine and opossums located between the communities of Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill—each town home to a major research university. This planned intervention was primarily responsible for the area's rapid growth and melding the surrounding towns into a metropolitan area. The RTP is currently home to 145 businesses and other organizations with a total of thirty-nine thousand employees. Major businesses include IBM, GlaxoSmith-Kline, Cisco Systems, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. The park is also home to Research Triangle Institute International (RTI), the nation's second largest independent nonprofit research organization. The local importance of the RTP is underscored by the use of the name the Research Triangle to refer to the area. Most other metros are named after their dominant city such as the Portland metro or Chicagoland.

This book explores the circumstances and people behind the creation of the RTP and its role in the region's physical and social development. It addresses such questions as: What led to the RTP's creation? What contributed to its success? How has it shaped the region? And what role does it play in the lives of people who live in the metropolitan area?

Another distinct feature of this metropolitan area is that it is composed of distinct cities and towns with very different histories, economies, and personalities. Among the larger cities, Raleigh is the oldest with an estimated 2009 population of approximately 405,800 residents.² Created to be the state capital in 1792, it has a reputation as a fairly conservative community populated by government bureaucrats, business people, and RTP employees. Durham, founded in 1869, grew up around a train station and thrived on cigarette manufacturing and textile mills. Its estimated 2009 population was approximately 229,200. With the largest black and Hispanic communities among the Triangle's cities and towns, Durham has a reputation, despite Duke University's presence, as a gritty, working-class community. Chapel Hill, with an estimated 2009 population of approximately 53,500, is the smallest of the three communities that form the corners of the Research Triangle. The town, dating back to the founding of the University of North Carolina in 1793, is known as a liberal college town. Beyond these three communities there are others in the region including the town of Cary, which grew from a population of 1,400 in 1950 to an estimated 136,600 in 2009.

This book describes the diverse histories and characteristics of the area's constituent communities, as well as the benefits and the challenges posed by that diversity. It asks, to what extent do the residents experience and identify with the region as a whole or only with their own individual towns? How can the region grow and develop while holding onto its distinctive attributes, such as each town's unique personality, its lush natural environment, and easy access to employment, recreation, shopping, and cultural opportunities?

The Research Triangle area's spatial structure is also unlike that of many other metro areas. Its geographic center is a very low-density research and development park, not a diverse, high-density city center. Visitors to the area who set out to see the acclaimed Research Triangle Park often return disappointed because very little can be seen from the main roads. Driving through the RTP is more akin to driving through a state park. The roads are lined with loblolly pines and occasional signs announcing the entrance to IBM, GlaxoSmithKline, or other global corporations and research and development facilities.

Adding to the area's distinctive spatial structure is the very low density of its towns and cities. Single-family homes, often on relatively large lots, are the dominant form of residential development. Moreover, these homes have been relatively affordable compared to many metro areas. Each of the towns and cities has a downtown commercial core, but until very recently these cores have contained very little in the way of multifamily housing. The multifamily housing that does exist tends to be recent construction built in peripheral areas.

This pattern of dispersed, low-density development has certainly contributed to the area's rural and small town ambiance and appeal. However, as the region has continued to grow, it has resisted efforts to achieve more sustainable compact development and to expand public transit. The ongoing effort to build a light rail system, for example, was stalled when the projected ridership could not justify the costs. Efforts are being made to increase development densities around the proposed transit stops.

This book explores how the historically dispersed, low-density development impacts the lives of current residents and inhibits the area's ability to achieve a more sustainable twenty-first-century development pattern. It also offers suggestions on what needs to be done to change this pattern.

The Research Triangle is more immersed in the knowledge-based economy than most metropolitan areas. The percentage of people holding graduate degrees is one of the highest in the country.³ The area's share of the workforce in knowledge-based occupations is also among the highest.⁴ A recent ranking of the fifty-five largest metropolitan areas listed the Raleigh-Cary metro area as the most educated based on factors such as the number of residents with college and advanced degrees. Clearly, this has much to do with the presence of three major research universities and other colleges in the area. Together, Duke University, North Carolina State University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill confer over 750 Ph.D. and 2,500 master's degrees per year. Those universities have been crucial to the area's economic success. In recent years academicians-turned-entrepreneurs have launched highly successful local businesses; some hold patents related to the results of their research. Accordingly, the universities are paying more attention to the commercialization of new discoveries and have developed a variety of relationships with area businesses. This book presents the story of how the economy has evolved in recent years and the roles that several publicly-supported economic development organizations played in that evolution.

Finally, compared to many U.S. metropolitan areas, the Research Triangle is relatively young and rapidly growing. Much of its development history is yet to be written. The Research Triangle area has no limiting geographic features such as mountains or large bodies of water. Moreover, the area's knowledge-based economy and high quality of life positions it well for future growth. Projections show the region growing by almost one million people over the next twenty years.⁵ But this future is dependent on how the region handles that growth. Will it lead to severe traffic congestion and the degradation of the natural environment, or can it avoid typical problems of urban sprawl? The key to success is to further develop regional cooperation in the area. This book explores the extent to which the Research Triangle area is fully integrated as a region, what stage of regionalism it has reached, what needs to be done to further integrate the region, and the major obstacles to Research Triangle metropolitan cooperation.

DEFINING THE RESEARCH TRIANGLE METRO

Building on the word metropolis, metropolitan area refers to a large important city (or cities), along with contiguous areas functionally linked to it (or them) by employment or commuting patterns. Reasonable people may differ, however, on the extent of linkage needed between a city and surrounding areas before these become a metropolitan area. In the 1940s the federal government defined which areas are included for the purposes of reporting census data, hence the creation of the metropolitan statistical area or MSA. According to the federal government an MSA consists of counties containing a city of fifty thousand or more, plus contiguous counties where the total of commuting in and out is 25 percent or more.

Of course, metropolitan area designations and boundaries change over time due to population increases or decreases. In 1950, when the Census Bureau first reported data by metropolitan area, the Raleigh-Durham area had two: the Raleigh MSA, which included the city and the remainder of Wake County, and the Durham MSA, which included that city and the remainder of Durham County. As the area grew, Orange County was added to create the Durham-Chapel Hill MSA and in 1981 the two MSAs were combined into the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill MSA. Over the next two decades Chatham, Franklin, and Johnston Counties were added. In 2005 the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) split the MSA into the Raleigh-Cary MSA and the Durham-Chapel Hill MSA and Person County was added to the Durham-Chapel Hill MSA, bringing the combined county total to seven.

Thus, the definition of the Research Triangle metro used in this book covers the seven counties of Chatham, Durham, Franklin, Johnston, Orange, Person, and Wake. Although these counties are not in a single metropolitan area as defined by the census, I refer to this area as the Research Triangle metro or simply Research Triangle area since that is how it is often marketed by economic developers, and referred to both by the press and some area residents.

This book is organized into six chapters. Chapter 1 presents a brief history of the Research Triangle area including the geological characteristics that have influenced its human settlement pattern. It also describes the major social conflicts that have played out as well as the founding and development of the major towns, universities, and colleges in the area.

Chapter 2 describes how the area's historically distinct towns and cites were knit together into a metropolitan area. It tells the story of the Research Triangle Park, a story of foresight, risk taking, and political favors. It also describes RTP's impact on the area, and the challenges it faces as industry and work patterns change. The development of the Raleigh-Durham Airport and Interstate 40 are also discussed since these projects were crucial to the creation of the Research Triangle.

The area's rapid population growth and the impact of that growth are discussed in Chapter 3. It describes the distribution of growth throughout the metropolitan area and the diversification of the area's population, particularly with respect to ethnicity. The chapter also discusses the reasons people are attracted to the area and where they come from. Finally, this chapter describes the impact of rapid population growth and increased population diversity on demand for schools, traffic congestion, need for water supply, and social relations in the area.

Chapter 4 describes the area's evolving economy. It describes the transition from an economy based on agriculture, textiles, and manufacturing to one based on information technology, telecommunications, and pharmaceuticals. The chapter identifies the intentional infrastructure and strategic initiatives that facilitated that transition; the recruitment of existing companies to the area and the incubation of new ones; and the challenges to the area's continued growth and prosperity including the decline of mature industries, increasing competition, and erosion in the area's quality of life. This chapter offers strategies for addressing those challenges.

Chapter 5 describes the Triangle's distinctive development pattern characterized by a low-density core and urban sprawl. It describes efforts to contain sprawl including planning for mixed-use activity centers, downtown revitalization, the development of a commuter rail system, and the preservation of open space. The chapter also discusses the challenges to containing sprawl, including fragmented jurisdictions, lack of land use and transportation coordination, and a lack of strong regional planning.

The final chapter discusses the short- and long-range prospects for the Research Triangle metropolitan area. It argues that maintaining the area's quality of life over the long term will require bold actions, including a substantial increase in cooperation among the Triangle's counties, cities, towns, and rural areas. This concluding chapter suggests a model for such cooperation suited to the political and social characteristics of the area; it discusses as well the obstacles to achieving such cooperation, the need for the physical transformation of the area, and what other metro areas can take from the Triangle's experiences.

CHAPTER 1

Early History

To truly understand the contemporary challenges facing the Research Triangle metropolitan area, one must understand its fascinating geological and human history. As noted by Sam Bass Warner, Jr.: City building is always a process of bit by bit additions so that the lineage of the past continues to assert themselves directly or indirectly.¹ That history helps to answer questions such as: Why are the towns and cities located where they are? Why was the area so slow to urbanize? Why has the area been developed at such a low density? What accounts for the economic, population, and personality differences among the towns and cities?

THE LAY OF THE LAND

The story of the Research Triangle begins about 450 million years ago when the east coast of what became the North American continent was located where the Blue Ridge Mountains are today. A wide ocean stretched to the east. Over the next 200 million years, land masses, including crustal fragments from the ancient Gond-wana land mass—composed of the present-day African and South American continents—and Gondwana itself smashed into that coast to form Pangaea.² The present-day Research Triangle is located on one of the Gondwanian crustal fragments, referred to by geologists as exotic terrain.³ Then about 225 million years ago Pangaea began to stretch apart. What was to become Africa drifted slowly off to the south, opening up the Atlantic Ocean.⁴ The stretching of the earth's crust during this movement created a series of rift basins, or inland lakes, along the east coast as the crust thinned, sank, and filled with water. One of those rift basins is the Durham Triassic Basin, which over time silted up and today is only evident as a dip in the topography running from northeast to southwest passing between Chapel Hill and Raleigh. The soils in this basin have particularly high clay content.

This ancient split of continents happened along the fall line that now runs diagonally across North Carolina, passing east and south of Raleigh.⁵ The area west of the fall line, including the state's Piedmont and Appalachian Mountain regions, contains remnants of an ancient mountain range, underlain by igneous and metamorphic rock. The Piedmont's geological age combined with long hot summers and year-round weathering conditions to produce soils rich in clay and iron oxides, which generated the land's distinctive red color.⁶ These soils' high clay content has low percolation rates and high shrink-swell ratios. Water does not easily drain through the soil; it expands when wet and contracts when dry. A contemporary impact of these soils is that they are not well suited to on-site septic systems, leading local governments to require large building lots where sewer service is not available.

East of the fall line, the Coastal Plain extends to the sounds and has been created over the last 200 million years from sediments eroding from the ancient mountain ranges and carried by streams and rivers to the ever-advancing shoreline. While that area of the state is composed of sedimentary and alluvial soils with high sand and clay content, it also contains many marshes and wetlands and its alluvial movement over millennia created a string of narrow barrier islands often far from the mainland and separated from it by very shallow sounds. Lacking natural deep-water harbors suitable for major ports, and with swampy conditions making road building difficult, the Coastal Plain remained largely rural.

Figure 2. Key geological features of the Research Triangle region (map by Peter Zambito).

Compared to the rugged mountain region or the swampy Coastal Plain, the Piedmont's gentle hills were more conducive to roads and therefore development. Major Native American trading paths and early European wagon roads cut through the Piedmont, including the Great Trading Path of Native American tribes in Virginia and the Carolinas. As early settlers arrived, they used this path to trade with tribes settled along it. In more modern times, the North Carolina railroad was constructed along portions of this corridor, as was Interstate 85, which links the Triangle area with Petersburg and Richmond, Virginia, to the northeast and Charlotte, Columbia, South Carolina, and Atlanta, Georgia, to the southwest. The lack of deepwater ports and good roads in eastern North Carolina also meant that many early Piedmont farmers and manufacturers had to send goods through ports in Virginia and South Carolina—one of several factors that slowed economic growth in the state and region.

The Piedmont's steeper topography creates faster running streams and rivers than in the flat Coastal Plain. Thus, mills and manufacturing operations gravitated there to take advantage of this fast-flowing water to turn waterwheels for grinding grain and to power manufacturing processes. Looking closely, one can still see remnants of these mills and factories along many of the area's rivers and creeks.

THE FIRST INHABITANTS

Native Americans are thought to have inhabited the region as early as 12,000 B.C.E. Upon arrival, paleo and archaic tribes